Partin v. State

82 So. 3d 31, 36 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 705, 2011 Fla. LEXIS 2796, 2011 WL 5984445
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedDecember 1, 2011
DocketNo. SC08-2348
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 82 So. 3d 31 (Partin v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Partin v. State, 82 So. 3d 31, 36 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 705, 2011 Fla. LEXIS 2796, 2011 WL 5984445 (Fla. 2011).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

Phillup Alan Partin appeals his conviction of first-degree murder and sentence of death.1 For the reasons stated below, we affirm his conviction and sentence.

I. BACKGROUND

On July 31, 2002, 16-year-old Joshan Ashbrook was reported as a runaway. She left the house early that morning and was walking beside the road near her house when she met Partin at an intersection. Partin, who was driving his seven-year-old daughter in a maroon pickup truck, offered to give the victim a ride. Soon afterward, the victim called her boyfriend’s residence using a cellphone in Par-tin’s possession. Minutes after placing the call, Ashbrook arrived at her boyfriend’s house in a pickup truck described as burgundy, gave her boyfriend’s mother a note to pass along to her boyfriend, and left in the same pickup truck.

Law enforcement later discovered that the cellphone from which the victim called that morning was registered to Partin’s ex-girlfriend, who once lived with Partin and bought Partin a maroon pickup truck. When the detective called the number, Partin answered the phone and identified himself using a false surname. At that time, Partin admitted to giving a young girl a ride to her boyfriend’s house in his blue pickup truck and allowing her to use his phone on the way. He also told the detective that he dropped the girl off at a nearby store immediately afterward. The detective told Partin that the girl was dead and indicated a need to speak with him.

Law enforcement obtained video from the store to which Partin said he took the victim. The video depicted the victim arriving with Partin and Partin’s daughter in a maroon pickup truck. It further documented all three of them leaving the store in Partin’s truck, contrary to Partin’s statement.

Hours after leaving the store with the victim and his daughter, Partin received a warning for fishing without a license. The wildlife enforcement officer who issued the warning recalled that Partin had a red pickup truck and that a female and a small child accompanied him. Partin later admitted to receiving the warning and providing a pair of his shorts to the victim so that she could go swimming. After fishing and swimming, the three returned to Fred [36]*36and Diana Kaufman’s house, where Partin and his daughter were staying.

Later that day, Diana Kaufman observed Partin’s daughter and another female sitting in Partin’s room playing video games. She noticed that the female was wearing shorts. Mrs. Kaufman did not see the female’s face and did not see her leave the house. But Mrs. Kaufman did notice that Partin’s truck was in the driveway that day, that the truck was gone that night, and that Partin returned alone at 1:00 a.m. the next day. Partin’s daughter testified that she played video games with the victim, that her father and the victim left that night without her, and that she never saw the victim again. Ashbrook died the night of July 31 or sometime prior to 3:30 a.m. the next day.

The next morning, the victim’s body was discovered in a wooded area approximately 50 feet from a highway. Law enforcement observed tire tracks indicating that a light pickup truck had backed up to the area where the body was found. A passerby later reported to law enforcement that he saw a dark-colored pickup truck backed up into the woods where the body was discovered.

Ashbrook’s body was found with her shirt pulled up to the top of her shoulder blades, and she was nude from the waist down. Her neck had been cut open, she had six incisor wounds on her face, and her hands and arms bore defensive wounds. The victim had ligature marks on her neck, wrists, and ankles, and petechial hemorrhages indicated that she was strangled. The ultimate cause of death was blunt head and neck trauma. There was no indication of sexual assault. A hair was embedded in one of the defensive wounds and was taken for testing.

In the days following the murder, Partin left the Kaufmans’ house and, without disclosing his intended destination, dropped off his daughter with a friend. He then abandoned his truck and ultimately left Florida. When law enforcement recovered the truck, the tires failed to match the impressions taken from the scene, and there was no sign of blood in the truck.

Sometime after Partin had moved out of the Kaufmans’ house, law enforcement recovered a camera from his room and found that he had taken pictures of his truck at a time when the truck had tires matching the impressions at the scene. Law enforcement also found a box that belonged to Partin containing hair clippings with largely degraded DNA consistent with the DNA found in the hair taken from the victim’s defensive wound. A portion of the carpet underneath a rug in his room at the Kaufmans’ house contained bleach stains and blood matching the victim’s DNA profile. Law enforcement also found small spots of blood on the room’s walls matching the victim’s DNA profile.

In the months following the murder, Partin made three telephone calls to the detective assigned to the case, asking about his daughter. Partin also responded to questioning about the murder and admitted that he picked up the victim, took her fishing, and then drove her back to the Kaufmans’ house. He told the detective that he dropped the victim off at the same intersection where he had picked her up and denied any sexual contact or involvement in her murder. The telephone calls were recorded and played for the jury.

In October 2003, over a year after the murder, Fred Kaufman agreed to cooperate with law enforcement and placed a recorded telephone call to Partin. Partin told Kaufman that he was in North Carolina, that he had changed his appearance, and that he considered himself a “dead man.” Partin also spoke to Kaufman about Partin’s participation in a recent [37]*37fight and indicated that he had lied to law enforcement after the fight in order to avoid giving a statement.

Partin was arrested in North Carolina later that month. Partin’s DNA profile matched the hair found in the victim’s defensive wound at all points. In a videotaped interrogation, Partin waived his Miranda2 rights, again admitted to spending the day with the victim, and again denied involvement in the murder.

Partin was first tried in October 2007. He was retried in March 2008 following an inadvertent discovery violation. After the retrial, the jury found Partin guilty of first-degree murder.

At the penalty phase, the State presented evidence that, in 1987, Partin had been arrested and later indicted for first-degree murder, armed robbery, and burglary but entered a plea agreement under which he was convicted of second-degree murder, armed robbery, and burglary. After hearing brief mitigation testimony from Par-tin’s daughter and ex-girlfriend, the jury recommended the death penalty by a vote of nine to three.

At a Spencer3 hearing, Partin presented expert testimony from two psychologists. The first psychologist, Dr. McClain, diagnosed Partin with polysubstance dependence based on past alcohol, marijuana, and painkiller abuse, cognitive disorder resulting in part from head trauma, and major depressive disorder recurrent. The second psychologist, Dr. Eisenstein, diagnosed Partin with bipolar disorder and intermittent explosive personality.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
82 So. 3d 31, 36 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 705, 2011 Fla. LEXIS 2796, 2011 WL 5984445, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/partin-v-state-fla-2011.